January 5th 2014

I'll never understand what gave him the urge to go into the army. He's tried so hard to explain to me how amazing the feeling is to be fighting for your country. "To be fighting for America is the greatest feeling in the world. To know I'm protecting you and all of the families that can't fight for their own freedom, it's the privilege I could ever ask for." He always says, but I still don't get it.

I understand how great it is to be doing something heroic with his life. I'm a writer, and a good majority of my stories involve some
kind of supernatural power that makes people heroic. I guess it's my selfishness that makes me think that he isn't just leaving me. He's leaving everyone, mom, dad, his girlfriend of three years, everyone. I'm proud of him. I truly am.

There's a thin line between being proud and hating him. And for me, being proud comes the day I hear from him, every other day I usually hate him for leaving. Luckily today I received a letter from him.

They sent him away again, we all knew that it was going to be soon. With all the fighting going on in Europe we knew he would be gone soon, I just didn't realize how quickly it came.

He can't tell me where he is, something about the military starting to read through the mail because they found someone sending something to someone they weren't supposed to send. Those were his exact words, not very much depth, but it's the army and he probably barely got that letter through.

I must say that I'm very patriotic myself, and I love what our military does for us. I just get angry sometimes, especially when I read Nate's letters. Especially when they're like this one.

All he kept saying the whole time is that he wanted to come home, how much he regretted joining the army and not going to school. He told me about how he hasn't actually done any of the things that he thought he would.

I remember him being so excited about joining the army, he was excited to learn how to shoot a weapon, and how he badly wanted to explore the world. He learned how to shoot, but to him that became more of a chore then something to be excited about.

As for traveling the world I guess he expected a little more then being stuck in the desert trying to keep all of the poisonous animals off of him.

That's all he complained about in this letter, but I'm sure I'll get another one soon.

January 16
I haven't got a letter from Nate yet, but apparently he managed to call his girlfriend, Kate. He told her basically the same thing that he told me a few weeks ago, so no real big news. I'm hoping for a email or something any day now.

January 29
You would think that because we are so advanced with our technology it wouldn't take so long for Nate to get some news to us, but I just got his letter today. He told me that their base was attacked, nothing major. Just a few men with guns that were easily brought down. He wasn't even awake when it happened and by the time that he was woken up all of the men were dead.

It seemed that maybe he wasn't as excited as he thought he would be.

I've realized that I'm going to use this diary as basically a tribute to him. Just so when he gets home he can have it, it's easier then saving all of the emails, and it gives me something to do.